I read two novels back-to-back that are both really hard for me to review, so I’m going to stick them together in one post.

Saints and Misfits

Saints and Misfits is an unforgettable debut novel that feels like a modern day My So-Called Life…starring a Muslim teen.

How much can you tell about a person just by looking at them?

Janna Yusuf knows a lot of people can’t figure out what to make of her…an Arab Indian-American hijabi teenager who is a Flannery O’Connor obsessed book nerd, aspiring photographer, and sometime graphic novelist is not exactly easy to put into a box.

And Janna suddenly finds herself caring what people think. Or at least what a certain boy named Jeremy thinks. Not that she would ever date him—Muslim girls don’t date. Or they shouldn’t date. Or won’t? Janna is still working all this out.

While her heart might be leading her in one direction, her mind is spinning in others. She is trying to decide what kind of person she wants to be, and what it means to be a saint, a misfit, or a monster. Except she knows a monster…one who happens to be parading around as a saint…Will she be the one to call him out on it? What will people in her tightknit Muslim community think of her then?

Saints and Misfits is largely about a Muslim girl grappling with how to handle almost being raped by someone well-respected by the community. She also grapples with toxic friendships and being attracted to someone when she’s not supposed to date anyone she’s not about to marry… especially when the person in question is not Muslim. But even those are coloured by the attempted rape, because her attacker is part of many of the same social groups that she is.

A huge part of this novel deals with shame, and the way victims of sexual violence are made to feel ashamed for something that was not their fault. This is something Janna fights throughout the novel as she tries to understand why she feels like she has done something wrong.

You will want to shank the young man who assaulted her on a regular basis. A great thing about how this was handled, though, was that Janna was not forced to be strong all the time. She was allowed to panic and lash out at times, and she spent a lot of time beating herself up for not being as strong as she thought she should be.

This novel tackles a lot of hard topics, but it was also nice to see a protagonist who’s a photographer. I live for protagonists with creative hobbies.

(One thing that bothered me about this book was the assertion that one of the characters *had* to have had a crush on someone because it was “normal.” This was a passing remark so I don’t want to go on about it too much, but stuff like that can be alienating to aromantic folks, especially with the way it was phrased in the book. I still recommend the book, but aros should be aware of that.)

Written in the Stars

A heart-wrenching tale of forbidden love

‘A wonderfully complex love story unlike any you’ve read before. Saeed has given a novel that is both entertaining and important.”—Matt de la Peña, New York Times bestselling author

Naila’s conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up—but they will choose her husband. Following their cultural tradition, they will plan an arranged marriage for her. And until then, dating—even friendship with a boy—is forbidden. When Naila breaks their rule by falling in love with Saif, her parents are livid. Convinced she has forgotten who she truly is, they travel to Pakistan to visit relatives and explore their roots. But Naila’s vacation turns into a nightmare when she learns that plans have changed—her parents have found her a husband and they want her to marry him, now! Despite her greatest efforts, Naila is aghast to find herself cut off from everything and everyone she once knew. Her only hope of escape is Saif . . . if he can find her before it’s too late.

I tore through this book, staying up late to finish it. It’s a hard read, especially around the halfway mark. I don’t cry very often while reading books, but this one made me cry a lot.

This is an infuriating book for so many reasons, but they are the right reasons. Naila is put through a lot of awful things by the people who are supposed to love and care for her. The terrible thing is, though, is that her family thought they were doing the right thing. What a mess.

Saif was an incredibly wonderful character and exactly who Naila needed on her side through all this. He would go to the ends of the earth for her, and pretty much did. I also loved Naila’s little brother. He was a sweetheart.

I will say, unless you want to read the whole thing in a couple of hours like I did, you’ll probably want to stop before the bus thing happens. Because it’s pretty much a constant spiral of awful after that until the end. I literally could not bring myself to stop reading because I could not leave things where they were.

This was a great, heart-wrenching read about a real issue that affects girls around the world, but I will say the ending felt slightly abrupt. Just a little more would have let things breathe at the end after everything that had happened.

What Are You Currently Reading?

I started Saints and Misfitsa couple days ago and am most of the way through it now. It’s a stressful read, but a good one if the sexual assault isn’t too triggering for you. Given the current climate surrounding untouchable men being revealed as predators, it’s also incredibly relevant right now.

What Did You Recently Finish Reading?

It took me a while to read Shadowshaperon account of having a massive book hangover, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Cool magic system, incredibly diverse and a very voice-y protagonist. I’ll have to get the sequel and companion stories when I have time and money to read them. Here’s my review.

What Do You Plan on Reading Next?

Assuming the Netgalley file gets fixed, I am so pumped to read Girl Made of Stars. It’s another one tackling sexual assault, from a different perspective this time. Also: queer characters.

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Down the TBR hole is a weekly meme created by Lia @ Lost in a Story that revolves around clearing out all the books on your TBR you’re never going to read anyway. I’ll let Lia describe how it works:

Most of you probably know this feeling, your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well that’s going to change!

It works like this:

~ Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.

~ Order on ascending date added.

~ Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.

~ Read the synopsesof the books

~ Decide: keep itor should it go?

I’m still in the “ADD EVERYTHING” section of my Goodreads TBR, which will become evident very quickly since four out of the five books I have this week are from the same author.

I liked Diemer’s The Dark Wife well enough, but I wasn’t a huge fan of her writing style. This blurb doesn’t really grab me and, given I have a lot of sapphic rep on my TBR these days, there’s no real reason to keep this one.

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Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra’s near-comatose abuelo begins to say “No importa” over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep…. Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on.

Sierra soon discovers a supernatural order called the Shadowshapers, who connect with spirits via paintings, music, and stories. Her grandfather once shared the order’s secrets with an anthropologist, Dr. Jonathan Wick, who turned the Caribbean magic to his own foul ends. Now Wick wants to become the ultimate Shadowshaper by killing all the others, one by one. With the help of her friends and the hot graffiti artist Robbie, Sierra must dodge Wick’s supernatural creations, harness her own Shadowshaping abilities, and save her family’s past, present, and future.

If you’ve spent much time on diverse YA Twitter, you’ve probably heard of this one. I don’t think I’ve encountered anybody who didn’t like this book at least a little bit, so it’s been on my radar for a long time. When I needed a book to fit the “POC on the cover” square for Diversity Bingo, I knew just what to pick. I mean… look at that cover. It’s glorious.

Details at a glance:

Title: Shadowshaper

Series/Standalone: Series (book 1)

Author: Daniel José Older

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy (some have also called it Paranormal or Magical Realism)

Okay, so this is probably one of my favourite reads this year. Like with most books, I had trouble getting through the first half or so but then picked up as I got closer to the end. That’s more of a *me* problem than anything to do with the book itself.

SHADOWSHAPER introduces a magic system based on communing with the spirits of the dead. Most practitioners tend to be Latinx, with the tradition often handed down between generations within families. Shadowshaping is not reliant on blood relation, so this is more in the way of passing down oral history to one’s children than having something inherent in one’s genetics… in most cases. There is a (spoilery) exception to this that I won’t go into details about. Anyway, the magic system is really super cool and is heavily reliant on community ties to be at its best.

A tight-knit community is at the centre of this story. Sierra has her peers who are friends, but she also has several older relatives, a godfather and other older community members who look out for her. The cast is incredibly diverse–there aren’t many white people–and the Spanish-speaking Latinx characters often switch to Spanish for pieces of dialogue. Both the protagonist, Sierra, and her love interest, Robbie, have afro-textured hair and we see Sierra fighting external and internalised messages of colourism and sexism to love her skin, body and hair just the way it is. I also loved there was a side f/f couple, and that there’s a short story about them set after this book.

SHADOWSHAPER also deals with issues of gentrification and cultural appropriation. Sierra’s neighbourhood in Brooklyn is slowly being taken over by exorbitantly-priced hipster coffee shops and other absurdly expensive white-people stores. The antagonist is a white male professor trying to force his way into a tradition he has no business interfering with, in the interest of White Saviouring the shadowshapers back to their former glory, with him as their boss. He acts like he has more of a right to the shadowshaper tradition than Sierra does… even though it’s her heritage. What a Class A dickbag.

Sierra deals with a lot of sexism throughout the story as well as racism and colourism. Men in her family acting like magic is some kind of boy’s club, street harassment… she even has to call out Robbie a few times. Sierra is not interested in this bullshit, and it’s glorious to read her refusing to entertain it.

This book is written in third person limited, but Sierra has such a strong narrative voice that at no point did I feel detached from her. Sierra is an extremely engaging character to read. She’s brilliant and headstrong, but, on the flip side, also impatient and sometimes jumps to incorrect conclusions. She also struggles with the trauma of experiencing the darker aspects of the spirit world. She’s an extremely well-rounded character and a joy to read.

The dialogue is also witty as heck and I loved reading how the strong bonds of friendship and community help Sierra deal with everything thrown at her. Seriously, she has some real ride-or-die friends. The characters were incredible and distinctive.

I did have issues with the frequency of ableist language in the book. Some of it is called out (i.e. about the word “cr*zy” being used to dismiss people), but most of it stands without challenge. Something to be aware of when reading.

Overall, SHADOWSHAPER is an awesome read with a cool magical system, great characters and a strong sense of community. I need to get my hands on everything else in the series now.

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F/F is my favourite thing ever when it comes to fiction. It makes me feel right at home, all cozy and happy and warm. I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for a while, but because I’m not a super fast reader, it’s been difficult to find enough books that: 1) I have read, and 2) aren’t problematic shitfests… as far as I can tell. So I will likely do additional lists in the future when I’ve read more.

If you want to find more recs, check out these lists (some have more than just f/f): this, this, this and this. I’d also recommend keeping an eye on the Sapphicathon twitter page for when they share recs and TBRs for the 14th-28th readathon. Here’s my TBR for that. The Lesbrary also has a massive Goodreads resource but I find it overwhelming to even look at, personally.

Now, here is my list of a dozen books with a F/F relationship involving at least one of the protagonists.

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Down the TBR hole is a weekly meme created by Lia @ Lost in a Story that revolves around clearing out all the books on your TBR you’re never going to read anyway. I’ll let Lia describe how it works:

Most of you probably know this feeling, your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well that’s going to change!

It works like this:

~ Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.

~ Order on ascending date added.

~ Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.

~ Read the synopsesof the books

~ Decide: keep itor should it go?

I’ve been in such a reading slump lately, hence the lack of posts on the blog. So it’s time for my new favourite pastime: panicking over my TBR.

This has totally fallen off my radar. I used to quite like Holly Black’s books as a teen, but I’ve kind of drifted since then. I’m not really into the blurb of this book, though a friend’s review almost made me care, but then I found out the queer rep isn’t really front and centre, which was the whole reason I had it on my TBR in the first place.

I think I put this book on my TBR in a flurry of book-adding during the early phases of me actually reading diverse books. The blurb is fairly interesting, and this book is by an author of colour, but I have to really limit how many allocishet books I read or I get overwhelmed. Someone else might enjoy it, but I don’t think this is for me.

Again, interesting blurb and by an author of colour, but looks painfully allocishet. And a lot of the plot seems to really hinge on heterosexuality. I can’t do it. I wanted to, but my blood pressure won’t let me. Still, it’s another interesting one if you’re looking for books by authors of colour

I put this on my TBR because gay. And, from the sound of some reviews, that’s about all this book has going for it because apparently it’s not very well-written or structured. If I run across it in a library somewhere (unlikely; I’m Australian), I might pick it up if I don’t have anything better to do, but I’m not going out of my way to read it.

Verdict: Go

Wow, that was a brutal one. I normally find myself being too nice about my TBR. Surprise?

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Down the TBR hole is a weekly meme created by Lia @ Lost in a Story that revolves around clearing out all the books on your TBR you’re never going to read anyway. I’ll let Lia describe how it works:

Most of you probably know this feeling, your Goodreads TBR pile keeps growing and growing and it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. You keep adding, but you add more than you actually read. And then when you’re scrolling through your list, you realize that you have no idea what half the books are about and why you added them. Well that’s going to change!

It works like this:

~ Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.

~ Order on ascending date added.

~ Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.

~ Read the synopsesof the books

~ Decide: keep itor should it go?

I’ve been putting off doing this because I am in such a lazy mood and had a couple books that I really wasn’t sure about, but I haven’t been posting much on the blog so I need to do something.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep this one, but reviews have told me that one of the protagonists is bi and she has a female love interest so that’s made me more interested. Additionally, the other protagonist is Mexican-American (I think?) and both characters have disabilities. Also, it’s in my local library system.

Another one I wasn’t sure about, but both boys are apparently queer according to Goodreads people. However, this was meant to be part of a trilogy and the third book was never published. There is a short story to round out the series, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to get it since it appears to have only been distributed via the author’s newsletter. As much as the whole concept of this dystopian story interests me, I don’t have time for this shit.

I really wasn’t sure about this one since it had fallen completely off my radar. However, I do need to read more books about trans boys. Sounds like it’s gonna be a rough read (there is apparently a graphic rape, for instance) so I don’t know when I’ll be in the right headspace for it, but I’ve read some dark shit before so I should be okay.

Verdict: Stay

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So, while I’m not planning to share as many excerpts as I did for the Camp NaNoWriMo events this year, I’m still gonna be popping in from time to time with updates about my WIP for November. And apparently October, because NaNo prep is a thing.

Anyway, Gem on Twitter put together some questions about our WIPs and I wanted to curate them all in the one place since I foolishly didn’t include my WIP hashtag in all my responses.

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Less than a month to go until NaNoWriMo and I finally figured out what I’m gonna write: a rewrite of my first ever NaNovel from 2011. Originally titled Deathwitch, I’ve recently come to the understanding that I tried to squish two novels into one and completely did not do the first section justice by doing that. I don’t have a title for this new version yet, since Deathwitch refers to plot points that won’t even start until the sequel, so I’m just calling it by the main plot idea and hashtagging it as #QueerZombieKillingCheerleaders on Twitter. Long, but accurate.

Here’s my summary on the website (updated because I have a title now):

When Gwen Parker has a bisexual awakening at a party with her lesbian best friend and cheer captain, Miranda, she expects the weirdest part of the year will be navigating her ex-boyfriend’s creepy football buddies and her father’s inability to remember she’s queer. Reading weird books about the occult is just a hobby she fits in between school, cheer practice and babysitting her little sister.

Until her teammate’s quarterback boyfriend develops creepy red eyes, students go missing and the dead rise from their graves… and everyone blames Gwen. It’s up to Gwen and her squad to find out the truth, and save their small town from a zombie apocalypse.

Unlike previous events, I’m probably not going to post as many excerpts because I think I was posting too much of my work. I will give updates and possibly share a few favourite lines.

In any case, I’ve got my Scrivener file and have started the vague beginnings of outlining (mostly half-assed character profiles at the moment) so hopefully I’ll be ready to go for November, since I’ve got quite a bit on late in that month and will need to write as much as possible early on if I’ve got a chance of winning.

What Are You Currently Reading?

I just started Shadowshapertonight and am not very far in, but it’s already immensely different from the books I’ve been reading lately. I like that. I need to change things up a bit. I don’t read enough urban fantasy.

What Did You Recently Finish Reading?

I loved Wild Beauty. The writing is gorgeous, if a little exhausting. It took pretty much everything out of me, and what little thoughts I had left went into writing my review, so I might just share the link to that and leave things there.

What Do You Plan on Reading Next?

This is subject to change, but Mum grabbed Saints and Misfits from the bookstore for me recently and I think I might want to read it next. I’m not sure what mood I’m in at the moment. I’m still in a bit of a Wild Beauty hangover so it’s hard to decide right now. I think I definitely need to read a contemporary like this next, something completely different from what I’m reading at the moment.